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Deborah Haarsma serves as the President of BioLogos, a position she has held since January 2013. Previously, she served as professor and chair in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

N.T. Wright is a leading biblical scholar, former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England, and current Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Mary's College in the University of St. Andrews.

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The Top 20 Posts of 2014

It is not our goal to simply post content that will be viewed by lots of people (if that were the case, we’d feature more cat videos). We aim to deliver scientifically and theologically sound reflections on issues of origins. These are not topics that consistently go viral across the web. But sometimes they do spark significant interest, and in these cases we are usually indebted to our faithful readers who start the “snowball” rolling down the social media hill. In the spirit of year-in-review articles and programs that are occasioned by the final page of the calendar, we offer this behind-the-scenes glimpse into our most viewed blog posts of the year.

By a significant margin (more than double), the most viewed post on our blog this year was an interview with musician Michael Gungor on August 11. Gungor had been in the news for comments he had made about origins. Some concert promoters cancelled concerts because his views did not conform to their expectations. Our new content editor Brad Kramer thought our readers might enjoy hearing from Gungor directly and arranged for an interview. Brad was right! The interview was widely shared across social media platforms and drove more traffic to our site in a single day than we’ve ever seen.

Of course, every time we post anything about Ken Ham we also see a spike in traffic, and there are several posts in our top 20 concerned with him. Our second most viewed post was President Deb Haarsma’s January 15 introduction to the Ham-Nye debate. The debate was still three weeks away, but the internet had been buzzing about it. We used this event to emphasize our approach to such polarized and forced choices between two positions: BioLogos presents another option.

During the Ham-Nye debate, several of us were tweeting and preparing responses to many of the claims that were made. President Haarsma, Old Testament scholar John Walton, geneticist Dennis Venema, and I each wrote short responses to the debate, and our former web editor Emily Ruppel stayed up late stringing them together, and the result was our third most viewed post of the year on February 5th, “Ham on Nye: Our Take”.

On November 19, we posted an article by seminary student Daniel Stork Banks: “Confessions of a Failed Young Earth Creationist”. He had sent us his story of overcoming his feeling that science was a gigantic conspiracy, hoping it would resonate with other readers. It did!

Two more Ham posts weigh in at numbers five and six. Ham had written what we thought was an unfair attack on Hugh Ross, the president of Reasons to Believe. We have had positive interactions with Ross and Reasons to Believe, engaging in gracious dialogue despite our different views on evolution. So on October 13 President Haarsma defended Ross in an open letter titled, “Ken Ham, We Need a Better Conversation (Perhaps over Dinner?).”

Another response to a Ken Ham attack on our friends was my March 26 post, “Ken Ham and Biblical Authority”. Two of our ECF grantees, Josh Hayashi and Diane Sweeney have made a series of videos set in their native Hawaii about the evidence for evolution, aimed at high school students. Ham gave his typical spielabout the dangers of compromising biblical authority, so I wrote this post defending them and explaining further our commitment to biblical authority. Part of the post also features a very gracious response from Hayashi and Sweeney.

On July 21, we posted an interview our former Web Editor, Emily Ruppel, conducted with Mary Schweitzer:“Not So Dry Bones”. Schweitzer had discovered something interesting in a 68 million year old T. rex bone, which challenged prevailing theories about the preservation of soft tissue in fossils. Young Earth Creationists attempted to exploit this to argue for their position. Schweitzer, herself a Christian, shared about the scientific findings as well as the struggles of relating to the science skeptics within the church—including one memorable incident when she was visiting a church and the pastor spoke from the pulpit disdainfully about her discovery without knowing she was in the congregation!

Readers frequently tell us that they are confused about how to understand the genealogies in Genesis. On a “plain” reading of these, it looks as though we should be able to piece together a timeline going back to the moment of creation (a la Bishop Ussher). On January 16 I gave some background and context for the use of ages in such genealogies in the post “Long Life Spans in Genesis”. I suggested that there are good reasons to think that we’re not supposed to understand these as straightforward claims about the length of life of these figures.

On July 30th, Wheaton College biology professor Rodney Scott wrote “So Do You Believe in Evolution?”He gave his story about the evolution of his own responses to this question—one that is frequently posed to a Christian biology professor.

Earlier this year, Bryan College was in the news for its position on origins. President Haarsma addressed the“Controversy at Bryan College” on March 6.

In September, John Walton and President Haarsma participated in a panel discussion with a Young Earth Creationist. Walton reflected on an interesting exchange from that panel in “On Being Right or Wrong” on Sept. 29.

This Spring, we conducted a series of interviews with contributors to the Zondervan book Four Views on the Historical Adam. President Haarsma wrote an introduction to this series on April 7, “Interpreting Adam: Introduction”.

President Haarsma wrote another introduction to a blog series on August 25. This time the series was a collection of reviews of Stephen Meyer’s book Darwin’s Doubt and the post was titled, “Reviewing Darwin’s Doubt: Introduction”.

In March, the BioLogos staff took an afternoon off to watch the much discussed movie Noah. On April 2 (barely missing April Fool’s Day), I wrote a short post about our experience in “The Noah Movie”.

Our final entry on the top 20 is by Ted Davis. As many of our readers know, Davis writes for us regularly on a variety of topics related to origins. On December 3rd he started a new series on a scholarly paper on original sin by philosopher Robin Collins. We're glad to see that in less than one month, it has become of our 20 most popular posts of the year.

Thank you, our faithful readers, for a great 2014 on the blog. Without giving away any spoilers, I can safely say that 2015 will be an extremely exciting year for our blog, as well as the entire website. BioLogos is quickly becoming a nationally trusted voice in the origins debate, and next year you can expect lots of timely, high-quality engagement with the tough issues of science and faith. Stay tuned!

Notes

Citations

Stump, J. (2014, December 26). The Top 20 Posts of 2014Retrieved March 19, 2018, from /blogs/jim-stump-faith-and-science-seeking-understanding/the-top-20-posts-of-2014

About the Author

Jim Stump is Senior Editor at BioLogos. As such he oversees the development of new content and curates existing content for the website and print materials. Jim has a PhD in philosophy from Boston University and was formerly a philosophy professor and academic administrator. He has authored Science and Christianity: An Introduction to the Issues (Wiley-Blackwell, 2017) and edited Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design (Zondervan 2017). Other books he has co-authored or co-edited include: Christian Thought: A Historical Introduction (Routledge, 2010, 2016), The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), How I Changed My Mind About Evolution (InterVarsity, 2016), and Old Earth or Evolutionary Creation: Discussing Origins with Reasons to Believe and BioLogos (InterVarsity, 2017).

"What kind of evidence would somebody need to have in order to be rationally compelled to say that an event was a miracle? That person would have to know that this event could not possibly be explained by future science. But not only is such a belief unwarranted, it’s also bad for future science to believe it."

These provocative words are written by Princeton philosopher Hans Halvorson (a Christian), in an article that itself provoked some good discussion when we posted it last week.

Check out the full article (link in comments), and then respond to the quote above. Does calling something a "miracle" put it in danger of being debunked by future scientific advances? Is there a different way of thinking about the concept of a miracle, that might satisfy his concerns? Feel free to discuss below. ... See moreSee less

Hard for me to see that the Incarnation is not a miracle. For others , God could be working on a quantum level?? But does the latter fall into”God of the Gaps?”

5 hours ago · 1

Amen🌀 Jesus doesn't care about Alabama Crimson Tide 🏈 football. Instead, He loves 🌀 Spring and the start of ⚾ baseball season. That's why He started His own story, "In the Big inning..." Just watch 🌀 His wind-up! You need to start reading your 📖 Bible!

3 hours ago

One thing for sure, it is more a philosophical question than a religious one.

7 hours ago · 2

Great article. In answer to you question about a different way of thinking about miracles that would "satisfy his concern", to me it would make sense to explain a miracle in terms of something that everyone (religious and non-religious alike) would have no explanation for, given our current understanding of science.

Science will never describe the full expanse of reality. Science is not geared to that end. This is basic knowledge.
Reason is the handmaiden of faith because faith takes us where reason cannot go. As such, the only thing that will ever describe the fill expanse of reality is faith supernaturally given by God, i.e. God graciously enlightening the intellect. Reason gives way to faith because reason is limited in its capacity to describe reality.
This is not to say reason is not essential. It is the handmaiden of faith because it is a true and good servant to faith. As such faith and reason never contradict, but faith does transcend reason.

10 hours ago · 5

I'm tired of these types of questions constantly being proposed. It was not a scientist who discovered that dead human beings do not rise from the dead (which is different than Jesus resurrection) it was simple human experience. Therefore, the question is rather silly to ask. My first reply is to ask: who cares if Jesus resurrection contradicts science? My second reply is to make the observation that this question is phrased in such a way that science is presupposed as the final arbiter of truth claims like the resurrection of Jesus. Thirdly, how exactly could scientists study the resurrection of Jesus? Scripture tells us that God raised Jesus from the dead. Can science study this claim? Fourth, it would be one thing to subject the resurrection to some sort of scientific investigation ( I know not what or how) and a completely different thing to study what the resurrection of Jesus means for me or you personally. It seems Biologos is in need of some good theologians and philosophers to add to this conversation. Finally, this question smacks of a form of Evidentialism that would make faith subject to the vagarities of evidence. In the end I have to affirm that it matters little to me if the resurrection of Jesus did contradict science. On another note, one could ask: whose "science" and which scientists?

3 hours ago · 1

Exactly so.

11 hours ago · 1

Mmmmmm, I would say that a resurrection is contradictory to observed evidence, but that's fine. A God that is truly supernatural would act supernaturally at times. Although, I suppose God could whip up a truly natural Star Trek hypospray to overcome the decay process and relaunch the body's systems.